The present invention relates to a storage technology of data information, in particular, to a storage method and device having two or more than two interfaces of different standards.
With the development of semiconductor storage technology, semiconductor storage devices have become the favorite of users because of the large capacity, high speed, lightness, and quakeproof properties. With the prosperous development of electronic technologies, electronic digital devices of various kinds are being used, such as digital cameras, palmtop computers, hand-held computers, laptop computers, desktop computers, mobile phones, digital camcorders, and MP3 music players, most of which use semiconductor storage device to store data information. And different digital products need to exchange data files between them. Generally, these digital products adopt various kinds of interface standards; however, conventional semiconductor storage devices usually adopt interfaces one standard, which makes it available only on digital products supporting interfaces of the same standard. Despite this, exchange of data files occurred between the digital products and in order to use the storage devices on digital products supporting interfaces of other standards, adapters and reader-writers are needed with functions of transfer. As a result, this increases the burden for the users and brings them of a lot of inconvenience.
A storage device CF card based upon the Flash Memory technology are being more and more widely used on portable electronic devices such as digital cameras, palmtop computers, and hand-held computers and have become a mainstream product in the field of mobile storage products thanks to its large capacity, high speed of writing, low consumption and other desirable properties. It supports hot dock/undock, is mobile, and can store large volumes of files and data; different electronic devices can exchange data and files by means of CF card as well. However, because CF cards have only interfaces of the same standard, they are still not very convenient for use. When they are used on laptop computers, special CF card adapters are needed (such as PCMCIA CF Card adapter). When they are used on desktop computers, special CF card reader-writers are needed (such as USB CF card reader-writer). Therefore, the user cannot directly save the files or data on the CF card into the computer or copy the files or data in the computer to the CF card. When the user uses portable electronic devices outdoors, he must bring with him the special adapters or reader-writers, which increases extra burden and costs. If the reader-writer is lost or damaged, the user will not be able to transfer the contents on the CF card to the host computer or download contents from the host computer to the CF card, and this naturally brings a lot of the inconvenience.
The objective of the present invention is provide a semiconductor storage method and device supporting multi-interface so as to avoid the drawbacks existing in the above mentioned technologies, and thus dispenses with the extra devices, connecting directly with different kinds of data processing system, being read or written, and functioning as the storage device for different kinds of data processing system, thus allowing the exchange of data between different kinds of data processing systems.
The objective of the present invention can be realized by providing a semiconductor storage method supporting multi-interface, which consists of the following steps:
(a) setting up a semiconductor storage device in which is installed a semiconductor storage medium module, a controller module to control the semiconductor storage device, and an interface module which supports at least two interfaces of different standards, wherein interfaces of different standards include serial or parallel or wireless communication interfaces; physically, the modules can exist independently or they can be combined into one or two modules;
(b) connecting the storage device, through the interfaces of different standards, to at least one data processing system which has the corresponding standard interface;
(c) establishing information exchange channel between the storage device and the data processing system based upon the serial or parallel or wireless communication interfaces;
(d) the storage device exchanges data through the exchange channel with the data processing system and stores data from the data processing system into the semiconductor storage medium module (10); the data processing system can retrieve required data from the semiconductor storage device.
The objective of the present invention can be further realized by providing a semiconductor storage device supporting interfaces of different standards that can be used in a data processing system, which comprises a semiconductor storage medium module for storing data, a controller module, and an interface module which supports at least two interfaces of different standards, wherein the interfaces of different standards include serial or parallel or wireless communication interfaces; the controller module is connected with the semiconductor storage medium module and the interface module, thereby coordinating the operation of the different modules.
Compared with the conventional technology, the present invention, having interfaces of more than two different standards, has the following advantages: It provides a convenient mobile storage device for the data processing systems using different interfaces, enabling the simple and easy exchange of data and files between different kinds of data processing system, thus reducing the configuration costs.
The data processing system mentioned in the present invention refers to electronic systems or gadgets with processors, including but not limited to the digital cameras, palmtop computers, hand-held computers, laptop computers, desktop computers, personal computers, microcomputers, data processing workstations, mobile phones, digital camcorders, MP3 music players, as well as various kinds of semiconductor storage device.